Management and operation of a large scale distributed communication network has a high degree of complexity. To address the complexity of managing such distributed communication networks, many computer tools and other automated methods have been developed. As part of the network management process, various network management and equipment usage reports have been developed and routinely produced. For certain optical network high speed data communication equipment, measurement of traffic utilization on specific transport facilities is desirable. Conventional methods to determine such traffic utilization have involved intrusive techniques such as inserting probes or nonuser test data into the communication network to sample the optical or electrical facility capacity usage. It would be desirable to provide a useful network traffic utilization report without the disadvantages involved with such intrusive techniques.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved system and method for determining data transport utilization.